


In Some Other World

by Whreflections



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, BDSM, Bottom Hannibal, But also, Dom Will, Drunk Hannibal, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Enemas, Light BDSM, M/M, Miscarriage, Nightmares, Omega Hannibal Lecter, Post-Fall (Hannibal), Protective Will, Rimming, Sub Hannibal, ish
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2018-11-16 21:46:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11261640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whreflections/pseuds/Whreflections
Summary: A collection of hannigram snapshots.  Some of them will be for verses I already have, others for future verses I have planned...others will just be random little bits and pieces that don't fit anywhere else.  Everything will be labeled.





	1. Post fall omegaverse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is what happens when I go on tumblr to see that the stupid Bottom Hannibal Discourse has been revived. 
> 
> There will, I promise, be a new chapter of An Approach to Academic Temerity tomorrow...I'm sorry it didn't happen tonight, but this was kind of a pressing need XD I pulled it from old notes, so bits of this have been kicking around in my head since like....Fall 15.

Will found the room on accident—or as much as the act of snooping through a house that both was and wasn’t his could be called an accident.  Hannibal had meant for it to be _theirs_ ; that much was obvious from the moment Will stepped into it, but there was a difference in knowledge and acceptance.  If pressed right after he’d arrived, Will would have said he wasn’t sure if it was hard to accept because he didn’t want it, because he knew they couldn’t keep it, or because he didn’t feel he deserved it. 

Now, standing in a place he’d unearthed that felt like another world, how he felt about the house itself dropped abruptly off his scale of importance.

He didn’t have much to compare with, but it wasn’t a stretch to say this was the most tasteful nursery he’d ever seen.  It wasn’t overblown or too busy, and yet…it was, too, undeniably a nursery in a way he’d have never expected to see in a home decorated under Hannibal’s watchful eye. 

Dogs were the overriding theme, and they were everywhere—painted in realistic detail into a mural that ran the length of the back wall, one up on his hind legs as if to look out the window, another doing the same but in the direction of the crib.  On the white wood of both it and the rocking chair, little pawprint embellishments had been carved out.  An _actual_ dog bed spread underneath the length of the crib, unused and looking too clean and soft to be believed.

If not for the details, he’d have sworn the house had come this way. 

There was no denying, though, that the bookshelf with its leather-bound children’s books was all Hannibal, or that Will couldn’t imagine him carefully painting in the stars he could tell were planned based on the sheet lying flat atop the changing table.  He needed no signature to judge even the loose sketch as Hannibal’s work, and no knowledge beyond his sailor’s mental map to tell him that the Dog Star would be right over the child’s crib, a clever nod and a fun touch for the little one.  Undoubtedly, he’d have used a different color of glow in the dark paint. 

Will hardly even realized he’d backed away until he’d gone far enough to bump into the dresser, jarring a baby monitor camera so much that he threw out has arm to try and catch it.  It slipped and hit the floor anyway, and Will didn’t have it in him at the moment to pick it up.  His fingers traced instead over the brushed silver handles.  They felt cold, stiff with newness.  He pulled them open, breathed in the lingering new paint scent and looked down on two stacks of onesies with bibs in between.  The first bib looked like a strawberry, the second could have been cut from elegant wallpaper, all vines and dark pink flowers on a forest green backdrop.  To the left, the top onesie was paisley, but he could see a flash of one near the bottom that looked like it had cartoonish fishing lures. 

To the right, the softest maroon fabric he’d ever touched surrounded a single embellishment, two sea otters curled around a pup that floated suspended between them, as if on a wine dark sea. 

Will slammed the drawer shut, pinning his thumb against the wood in the process.  He’d felt the blood blister form before he saw it, but he still swore when he did, shook his hand and then sucked on the tip of his thumb when shaking it hadn’t helped.  The pull reignited the ache in his cheek until he’d have cursed again if it hadn’t felt so vulgar the first time, in the place where he stood.  Cocooned in hypothetical innocence. 

When he lifted his foot to take a step, he intended it to be toward the door. 

He went to the closet instead. 

\-----

By the time Will sank into the soft reading chair in the master bedroom, he’d been over the beginning of this conversation in his head so many times it felt almost unreal, the way a word will if you roll it over and over on your tongue like a stone in a tumbler. 

Will pushed himself to sit forward, elbows on his knees, both thumbs rubbing at empty rings fingers.  It felt strange, and settling.  A good place to branch from reality and reach toward something else. 

“I need to ask you something.” 

On the bed, Hannibal blinked with the slowness of a sunning cat, though Will doubted there was much pleasure in the delay.  Sitting up on his own was a considerable struggle; getting to the bathroom could wipe him out for an hour.  He was far from at his best, and well aware of it.  Painfully aware of it, Will would be willing to bet. 

“The papers are all in the safe.  The combination—“

“You told me; it’s not about that.  You can tell me the combination again when we need it.”

“We should go to the house in Alberta.  If—“

“Duly noted.  Can I ask my question, now?” 

Hannibal swallowed, thick and drawn out like his throat held honey and staples.  “You may, but if it’s important it might have been wise to withhold the morphine for a while.” 

Will’s stomach dropped and contorted, an angry twist.  He wasn’t at all sure if that emotion was aimed at Hannibal for suggesting it, or at himself for having behaved badly enough that it wasn’t wholly out of the realm of possibility.  Will shook his head, once, firm.  “No.  Treating your pain isn’t an option.”

Whatever was on the tip of Hannibal’s tongue to say in response to that, Will didn’t want to hear it.  It was enough that he could feel the unsettling shift that preceded it, guilt laid smooth down his chest like a coat of hot wax. 

Will cleared his throat.  “When did you buy this house?” 

“When you resumed your therapy.” 

Earlier than he’d thought, but not impossible.  It didn’t feel off, or wrong, or a calculated move.  If it felt of anything at all, it was exhaustion.  Hannibal felt mostly of exhaustion, since they’d come out of the sea.  For his part, Will had felt too off balance for the luxury of exhaustion. 

“You made trips here to decorate.” 

Hannibal’s noncommittal noise wasn’t quite what he’d expected, as was the halfhearted lift and tilt of his hand.  “Sometimes, two or three times.  It blurs.  Not often.  I had most of it done remotely.” 

“And the nursery, was that done remotely?” 

Hannibal’s breath sucked in so sharp it had to have hurt, had to have pressured and pulled at the wound in his stomach.  His eyes closed, opened, and shifted to study the canopy over the bed.  “Mostly, with careful instruction.  I received pictures.” 

“Were you pregnant?  When you—“  _When you convinced Mason to kill Margot’s baby.  When you killed Abigail.  When you left me._ All were true, and none felt right.  The sound from Will’s throat when it first escaped was too much like wet laughter, and he moved quick to erase it.  “—when you went to Italy?” 

Simple, still true, and less right.  Like a burr on his tongue. 

Far from laughter, Hannibal’s initial sound was more like a bird being stepped on, thin and high, breaks in him and through him too fine and light for repair.  Will waited, knowing there was more.  With Hannibal, there was always more. 

“I wasn’t, no, but there was a point I thought I was.  A point I wanted to be.  Abigail was thrilled.  It seemed prudent to choose a large house.  Given your status as an only child and your penchant for collecting dogs it didn’t seem improbable that you might want a large family.  Only children often do.  Given that I had regrettably few childbearing years left to offer you, by necessity they’d have to be close together in age and I thought—“  His words had started to slur the longer and faster he talked, but he’d caught himself rambling at last.  Hannibal’s mouth pressed together, his fingers flexing and clenching in the blanket at his side.  “I discovered I wasn’t not long before I left.  Abigail made a cake, in consolation.  It was terrible.  She wrote on it.” 

What she’d written Will didn’t consciously try to guess, but he could imagine her writing it, could feel a level of fondness in the curl of badly written icing letters that would have matched the level in Hannibal’s voice when he’d called her efforts terrible.  His palate had hated whatever she’d done, and his soul had loved it.  He didn’t have to explain; Will knew. 

Will’s nail dug into the underside of his ring finger, the skin still sensitive after spending so long concealed.  He pushed until it properly hurt.  “You didn’t set the room up then.  There’s formula, in the closet; you don’t send someone to buy formula because you _might_ be pregnant.  That’s something you get when…” 

The catacombs rose in Will’s mind, surrounding him with the clack of stone and the gutter of flame as they grew into place.  He could feel the press of earth around him in the change of the air on his skin, smell the sweetness of Hannibal’s coming heat when a draft blew it toward him.  It had been, at that point, too early for Pazzi to tell.  Too early, too subtle for anyone to tell, beyond his mate. 

In the hotel room, after the museum, Hannibal had told him how he’d wanted Will to take him then, how resisting Will’s call had made him shake.  When Bedelia tried to settle him when he returned, he’d almost bitten her. 

Not long after, Will had found him in the museum, and they’d had four days of peace before whatever world they’d vanished to unwarped and spit them back out into the present.  It had the peace of simplicity, a teasing glimpse of a life they could have had stripped of all complication.  Will had left the window open to let Hannibal’s cries carry as he sated him, and he’d wondered how many alphas went home and touched themselves after hearing it, how many went home and fucked their mates.  There was something inescapably arousing in the thought of their jealousy, when _he_ was the only one who’d ever had Hannibal underneath him while lost in the mire of his heat, beautiful and hungry, almost childlike in his trust. 

Looking back on it now, it seemed incredibly foolish that he hadn’t thought of it before.  Under the circumstances, though, condoms had been the last thing on his mind.  Safe sex with the man who’d nearly gutted him would have seemed a laughable concept, and he hadn’t thought…

He hadn’t thought. 

Will scrubbed his hand over his face, and was glad when it hurt.  The pain made him look up, and Hannibal was watching. 

“Before you ask—“  His tongue seemed thicker with the morphine than it had a moment before, his accent thicker with it.  “—I didn’t do it on purpose.  I’d never…the experience was overwhelming.” 

“I didn’t say you did, Hannibal.”  He’d done lots of things on purpose, but it wasn’t hard to agree this didn’t seem like one of them.  After a lifetime spent sating his own heats pretty mechanically, even Will couldn’t fully imagine what it must have been like for him to have Will there with him, inside him and around him, soothing his pain and seeking his pleasure. 

Will’s head tipped forward into his hand, and he dug his thumb into his eye.  The blood blister hurt; his eye hurt.  His cheek, most of all.  _Christ_ , he was tired of pain. 

“What did you do, call the last day?”  He couldn’t imagine when, in between leaving the hotel and going back to the suite where they’d found Mason’s men, who’d already found the bone saw and the prepared broth.  There hadn’t been a point on the walk over he could remember that Hannibal’s hand hadn’t been in his. 

“No.  I told Chiyoh in person, on your front porch.  I gave her the password for a list I’d made online the first time I’d suspected, of items we’d need.  I’d thought to surprise you, have the room waiting.  And the dogs, she said—“  Hannibal coughed, the sound worryingly wet.  “But you stayed, and she didn’t have to get them.  I wrote and told her to focus on the room; we’d figure out how to move the dogs.  I was sure any child of yours would want—I never had a dog.  I’ve heard they’re comforting.  Cesar was always comforting.” 

Will felt as if his insides had gone into the Atlantic again, caught and endlessly eddied up and down, back and forth.  So much he wanted to say seemed wrong, not enough or too much or not relevant. 

In his head, Will counted from Italy to the trial.  Twice he lost his way, then gave up entirely. 

“In all that time, you didn’t think to tell me?  A phone call?  A letter?  A—“  Will mimed something, wasn’t even sure what the gesture was meant to entail.  A sonogram?  A picture?  A legal document telling him he’d now become the guardian of an infant born in prison?  “I would’ve come.” 

“Told you, and had you come for possibility of someone else, when you wouldn’t come for me?  Believe me, I’ve regretted that bit of selfishness more than once, and there’s little I regret.  Still, it was the only answer I had, at the time.  I had faith in you.” 

The past tense there would have hurt less, maybe, if it wasn’t said so frankly, if Hannibal wasn’t drugged and honest and peering with half open eyes up the canopy of a bed he’d probably picked out with Abigail in Baltimore, imagining the family they’d make in it.  The conversations they’d share.  Breakfasts in bed, late nights with books. 

It wasn’t just Will’s throat that burned; his skin seemed eager to go right along with it. 

“That was a shitty thing to say.  I’m sorry,” Will murmured, low enough that an ashamed tendril of him hoped he wasn’t heard. 

“It wasn’t unreasonable.  You had a right to know.”

“No human being’s an incubator.  You’ve got a right to that, too.  It was shitty.” 

Hannibal didn’t correct him, and his silence stung more than it had any right to.  It wasn’t inaccurate, or unearned, but it didn’t take into account Hannibal’s behavior, either.  Neither one of them ever emerged from their circling unscathed. 

Will breathed until he felt ready, the quiet between them stretched out into a bridge of indeterminate strength.  “Did Alana tell you where they ended up?  I…I know she wouldn’t be supposed to, but I know she gave you privileges.” 

Hannibal withdrew his arms beneath the covers.  There was a shift that looked as if he thought of trying to turn over, and thought better of it.  His eyes closed.  “She was under 20 weeks.  Alana was under no obligation to bury her, and I doubt she did.  I asked to see her and was told it wasn’t possible.  It didn’t seem terribly important, at the time, to ask why.” 

For the span of half a minute, at least, Will waited to feel surprised.  The sick dread he’d carried from the moment he’d slammed the dresser to now hadn’t changed in the slightest.  In acknowledging that, he had to admit to himself that on some level he’d known.  He’d been on the run with Hannibal for a little over a week now, after all, and seeing him regularly since he’d taken the Dragon’s case.  The evidence explained.  None of his changes in behavior fit with the existence of a living child he’d seek to find, but a lost one? 

 _Is there a child in your life, Will?  I gave you a child, if you recall_.  _I would have given you another, if I’d known you wanted to try again._

The effort not to throw up was substantial, but Will leaned into it, his head between his knees.  They didn’t have enough antibiotics for him to have the luxury of puking them up; not when Hannibal would probably need all the extras they had and more besides. 

When Will opened his eyes, pink and black dots swam against the smooth barn wood floor.  Wide, strong planks.  He could imagine the sound children’s feet would make on it, in the early morning.  He could imagine going to piss and coming back to find Hannibal in bed with a child curled up against him, warm and thoroughly awake and rattling on about their dreams. 

“How did it happen?”  Will asked, unnecessary and tight.  He knew.  Hannibal had told him, the night they’d come out of the water. 

 _You know it hurt.  You meant for it to._  

There was another small sound from the bed, less a trodden bird and more fragile for it.  “It’s not an uncommon side effect of the removal of a bond mark.  Evolutionarily, an omega without a strong pair bond is vulnerable, and in no position to successfully raise offspring and perpetuate their genes.  Biology cares a great deal for certain technicalities.  I’m not blaming you, Will, but—“

“Like hell.” 

“Please.”  If the unexpected venom in his own retort had shocked him—and it had, to the point that he felt shaken—the close proximity to _fear_ in Hannibal’s stopped him entirely.  Will’s head whipped up to see him, and though he moved too quick and had to press his palm to his mouth, the clear display of the long column of Hannibal’s throat was worth the effort. 

In his position, pale and weak and scrunched down into the bed as he was, the act could only be intentional.  That his eyes were clearly wet only intensified the hook the sight drove into Will’s stomach, slipping all the way back to wrap around his spine. 

Hannibal breathed deep, and exhaled slow.  “I won’t deprive you of the chance to yell at me; you deserve it, but don’t take it now.  I’m not in the right mind to receive it, and if you stop yelling for the wrong reason you’ll only resent it.”

In part of his mind, the same voice that had fished for Jack tried to remind Will that this was Hannibal Lecter, that any show of vulnerability was calculated, careful, to be mistrusted even when genuine.  In its own defense, it brandished a reenactment of Hannibal removing Cassie Boyle’s lungs. 

In an older corner, he could see his father, neck bared before his mother’s tirade, sitting in front of Will to shield him.  Strong, and frightened, full to his throat of the instinctive knowledge that if this woman tried to kill him, part of his body and mind would tell him to let her do it. 

Regardless of what he’d done or of what they’d done to each other, in the moment Hannibal was wounded, and weak.  Desperately in love, and on the run with a mate who’d twice openly rejected him, who had arguably tried to kill him and had the power now to feed him or not feed him, tend to him or let fever burn him alive. 

Pressing on now wouldn’t be debate, or baiting, or trading blows.  The only suitable word would be _abuse_ , and Will had never felt his capability for it more keenly. 

An insidious, incongruous voice pointed out that someday, it might be worth mentioning to Hannibal that discussion of his mother might not be such lazy psychiatry after all.    

Even _those_ words felt sharp tipped, and Will put them away.  When he pushed himself to his feet, he didn’t feel half as in danger of passing out or throwing up all over the night stand as he’d expected to be. 

“I don’t want to yell at you.”

“Then you have stopped for the wrong—“

“No, I haven’t.”  His fingers stroked through Hannibal’s too-close cropped hair thirteen times before he looked up, appraising, his eyes still wet, distant with a level of disconnection from his own pain that cut all the way to Will’s marrow. 

Hannibal blinked.  The tears held in tension along the surface remained.  “I’d like to think I have enough pride left in me to not take your pity, but I don’t.  I’ll take anything.” 

“Well, that’s good to know, I guess, but this isn’t pity.”  Carefully, slowly enough to broadcast his intentions, Will toed out of his boots and stripped down to his boxers and undershirt.  He told himself, while doing it, to perform whatever ruthless surgery in his mind he needed to to separate this Hannibal from the one he’d hunted, and again from the one he’d hunted with.  In the end, he didn’t need such drastic exclusions.  It shouldn’t have been strange, really, that with Hannibal hurting and in bed beside him, treating Hannibal like his mate wasn’t difficult at all. 

It was, rather, the easiest thing in the world. 

Will’s mind was back in Baltimore when Hannibal spoke, remembering, spinning its wheels. 

“You can lock the room.  The house in Alberta will be more practical.  I was hopelessly foolish, with this one.  It probably wouldn’t be wise to sell it right away, but eventually or if I die—“

“Go to sleep, Hannibal.  We’ll talk about it when you’re better.” 

His tension remained, a hot line of it that kept him forcing his eyes open against the morphine, even with Will’s arm around him. 

It didn’t fade until Will forced himself to focus, to narrow his thoughts until there was only the moment they were in, and he found himself purring to soothe Hannibal, the deep, rich sound of it filling his chest in a way it hadn’t in years. 

Hannibal’s face pressed into his shoulder, and Will felt his shirt grow hot and damp with tears, and heavy breath.  He purred louder. 

Dipping his head, he could reach the expanse of skin that had once borne his mark, now wiped surgically clean.  He lapped in long, smooth strokes with the flat of his tongue until the shuddering stopped, and Hannibal slept. 

Will didn’t. 


	2. postfall bottom Hannibal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I wanted to write like, at _least_ three, maybe four short pieces for BottomHannibalDay, because that's /so/ my jam. 
> 
> How many did I get done, you ask? Zero, because between life and work on An Approach to Academic Temerity there just wasn't time :( 
> 
> I do, however, plan to post them when I can...BottomHannibal...Month? XD 
> 
> Also, this one was totally not on my original list of plans, but was inspired by my current sunburn, XD
> 
> Warnings- rimming, light D/s themes

On the whole, Will is sick of playing games—or so he would have said if anyone had asked, but the truth is far more complicated. 

Here, in this world that didn’t seem possible months ago, they are in the process of doing everything they can to dispense with the games that got them to where they were now, to find a balance between them that could approach a functioning relationship.  It hasn’t been as hard as Will would have told himself it would be, before, but that isn’t altogether surprising. 

He had tried to tell himself they wouldn’t fit, like this, precisely because he’d known deep down that they would.  How could they not, when he could feel Hannibal from across a room, when their breath settled to match before they were even close enough to touch? 

With their former methods of testing each other demolished, however, new ones rise daily to take their place.  Will isn’t sure he’s entirely easy with that, but they seem so far benign enough, and maybe this is a constant true of all couples—Will considers himself no judge.  He and Molly had never playfully tested each other like this, or tested each other in earnest.  They sought each other for comfort and warmth, safety against cold in all the forms it took.  He and Hannibal, on the other hand, scrabble at and with each other with the inevitability of drowning men clawing for the surface. 

He can make that comparison rather thoroughly, now.  He has been one.  He knows; it felt the same.  Reaching Hannibal again after months away from him was like drawing in air, not _good_ , not with how much it hurt, but necessary if there was to be anything past that point. 

Compared to baits he’d set for Will in the past, this one is utterly tame, but Will’s taken his own sweet time taking it.  If Hannibal presses, later, he’s not sure he’ll even be able to say why that was, whether it was what might come of Hannibal’s possessiveness if he let it run unchecked that spurred him, or the niggling feeling that it would be best for the time being to take no risk of either of them getting bored.  As they settled, they could risk increasingly traditional domesticity, if they wanted to. 

They aren’t there yet, though, and at the moment Will can’t say he minds.  Hannibal’s skin feels so hot beneath his palm, so fire warm that even the guilt he feels at the twinge of pleasure he can’t shake doesn’t drown out the pleasure. 

“Do I have your attention now?” Hannibal murmurs, deliberately muffled against his arm.  If Will looked, he’d be willing to bet his eyes aren’t even open. 

He presses his hand more firmly to Hannibal’s back, then draws it away for the sake of seeing his own handprint lingering for a moment in stark relief, blindingly white against such fiercely sunburnt skin, the inverse of the brand that’s down and to the right and undoubtedly hurting from overexposure to heat and sun.  He _does_ feel a deeper flash of guilt, over that, but he’ll see to looking after him as soon as they’re back inside.  For now, he can let himself have the pleasure of reveling in something he probably shouldn’t, but that does no real harm—transient marks, left on willing skin in the wake of his fingers. 

“You had my attention earlier.  That doesn’t mean I’m going to cancel on our neighbors when I’ve already made plans to help with their boat.”  Will brings his other knee to rest on the oversized lounge, now straddling Hannibal properly.  In the shade made by his body, the deep shades of pink and red that cover his back and tender thighs are all the more apparent, his body only shielded by a small scrap of a swimsuit, just enough to cover his ass.  “Or that I won’t take the dog for a walk, or finish the fly I was working on.  I can notice you without it becoming pressing.  I’m not required to drop everything because you’re jealous and want me to stay and have sex with you.” 

“Certainly not required to, but I had hoped—“  Hannibal cuts off with a soft, startled sound, the pale skin of his ass suddenly exposed as Will tugged his suit down to  the tops of his thighs, just beneath his cheeks.  “I’d hoped you might want—“

“Again, I can want you when I’ve got things to do.  I know we aren’t working—“  and that had been a point of some contention, but it seemed to make most sense, especially now, with the need to lay low and Will’s shoulder still hurting him at odd hours, Hannibal’s breath still occasionally short.  “—but we can’t just have whatever we want when we want it.”

“Can’t we?” 

There’s such honest question there that Will almost wonders if he’s right, but now isn’t the time for serious discussion on the matter.  He spent the entire damn time he had the fucking boat motor apart half hard thinking of Hannibal out here, mostly naked and waiting for him to be enticed enough to regret rejecting the advances he’d made after breakfast.

Thinking of this moment, and what he’d do to reward his own patience.  Whether this was more a reward or comfort after a punishment for Hannibal, he wasn’t sure.  This…game, if it was one, was new, developing, utterly lawless.  If it grew, they’d have to address it.  For now, it could wait. 

Will tugs up on Hannibal’s hips, guiding them to rise.  The gentle scrape of stubble against the red of Hannibal’s lower back can’t feel that good, but Hannibal shivers into it as if it does, the faintest motion Will only feels because his hands are pressed so tight.  His breath is already heavy as he pauses at the cleft of Hannibal’s ass, eager and waiting.

“Did you get off while you waited for me?”

“No,” he says, and it sounds beautifully insulted, as if he would never, as if it didn’t occur to him.  Something in Will’s chest that he isn’t ready to examine crows, and settles in a little deeper.  “I waited.”

“That’s good,”  Will’s hands shift, grip adjusting to spread the cheeks of Hannibal’s pale ass wide, exposing him.  “Because I thought about coming back here, and doing this until I couldn’t wait another minute.” 

If the sound Hannibal makes when he lowers his head and starts to fuck him with his tongue is any indication of success, he won’t be able to do this long, but the fractured joy in that single sound alone is worth the wait and the guilt and the questions about whether what they’re doing, here can be healthy, whether it can be right. 

Whatever it is, the wild rapture that’s thrumming his chest is matched in Hannibal’s, and isn’t that the point?  Isn’t that why he came in the first place; all that matters now that he isn’t dead?

He doesn’t know, and maybe no one does, but it feels true and Hannibal is canting his hips back into Will’s mouth, making soft little wounded sounds like the heat of Will’s tongue is taking him apart. 

There’s nowhere else Will wants to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know, it cuts off before the porn but I have to sleep, guys, lol It was hard enough getting this much together while on vacation with very un-fic-friendly family, but I had to participate, XD 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! I can't WAIT to see what all the fandom comes up with!


	3. postfall sub!Hannibal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not new, really, lol 
> 
> It's new to AO3, but I posted it on tumblr months ago. I very much am hoping to have new AATAT up soon...as you're probably aware if you follow me on tumblr, the sick family member I had mentioned passed away and things have been rough. 
> 
> Warnings- dom!Will, D/s themes, enema

With a motion much slower than the racing of his own heart, Will stroked his fingers through Hannibal’s hair.  Long, even motions, feeling all the way out to the soft, silvery ends, pausing here and there to knead at the nape of his neck. 

Obligingly, Hannibal tipped his head forward.  Only the barest shift of his knees and his palms against the tile floor betrayed any impatience. 

Will’s thumb dug in a little harder, his voice thick with the husk of arousal when he spoke.  “Tell me again why we’re doing this.” 

The pink tip of Hannibal’s tongue wetting his lips was as tantalizing as the quick peek of his teeth, weapons when he chose them to be, full of tenderness when he didn’t.  “To provide an exercise in control, and the how it feels not to have it.  I took it from you, you want to take it from me.  Although,” His voice turned hesitant, softer, his neck craning as he dared to look aside at his beloved tormenter.  “As I’ve arguably experienced a lack of control during three years institutionalized, in addition to experiences we’ve had together these last few months—“

“ _Hannibal_.”  Even Will’s admonishment couldn’t carry entirely free of desire, not when he felt so full of it.  It hung in the very air, a haze of need.  He could not have sated these hungers anywhere else, with anyone else, but here….

Here, there was nothing beyond his reach, nothing at all.  The exhilaration had begun, these last months, to sing in his veins to a pitch that made him wonder why he hadn’t done this years ago, why he hadn’t _seen_. 

Will tugged gently at the fine hair near the base of Hannibal’s skull, a caress, and a reminder that he could pull tighter, when he chose.  “Loss of control, and what else?”

Hannibal looked beautifully hunted, like rabbit before the dogs.  The choice to run, or go to ground, or be taken by the neck.  “The…indignity.  You want to see me exposed.  To crack me open until you find embarrassment.” 

Full of hunger, Will soothed his prey, the stroke of the back of his hand gentle against Hannibal’s cheek.  “But would I let anyone else see you like that?”

The shake of Hannibal’s head was immediate, and gratifying, better still when he turned far enough to kiss the tips of Will’s fingers.  The reverence in the touch of his mouth only made Will’s dick harder.  “No.  Just for us; you promised.”

“And you aren’t the only one who keeps your promises, are you, Hannibal?”

Hannibal’s breath stirred against Will’s fingers, soft and warm.  “No, Will.”

It was time.  The affirmations were necessary, more for Hannibal than for him—he knew his own intentions, but he had to be sure, every time, that Hannibal understood.  Every time, and more so at moments like this, on the cusp of something new. 

Will lifted the heavy metal plug from the basin of warm water it had been soaking in, testing it against the inside of his wrist to make sure it wasn’t too hot.  “Safeword, please.”

“Mischa.” 

Whether Hannibal had intended it or not, every time he heard it, it was a reminder to be gentle.  Hannibal’s body could take anything; his heart was far more fragile, and he handed it to Will with such reckless abandon.  Like a child with a robin’s egg in their hand, holding it out to show it off, heedless of how easily it could be crushed. 

Will popped the cap on the lube and wet the plug generously, thickly, spreading it with his fingers and feeling the heat.  As well as he’d fingered Hannibal before they came to this point, it slipped in easily and settled heavily, nudging against his prostate.  For comfort, Will placed a hand at the base of Hannibal’s spine, pressing gently. 

“This is going to hurt,” he said, incongruously tender.  He thumbed open the release on the line, releasing a mixture of warm water and soap, a careful mixture they’d concocted together.  Hannibal had tried, initially, to make it harsher, and Will had refused.  The circumstances alone would help push him to the edge of control; excessive force wasn’t necessary.  As a trainer, Will had never used force, only love, and a firm hand when he needed it. 

Hannibal’s back hunched the barest amount as the water began to fill him, reflexive motion that came in silence.  The turn of his head toward Will was just as instinctive, just as raw, and Will’s pull to answer it was no less elemental.  He pulled his chair closer, shifted until Hannibal could rest his head against Will’s thigh, his nose nestled close to Will’s groin, breathing him in. 

When Will’s hand came to rest against the back of his head, the shiver that passed through them was so mutual, so synchronized there was determining where it ended, or where it had begun. 


	4. postfall- Canada

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written...wow, over a year ago now for a tumblr prompt from moku-youbi-
> 
> ♚-Head Scratches
> 
> Warnings- drunk!Hannibal, protective!Will, nightmares, mentions of past trauma and cannibalism

It’s impossible for Will not to compare the moment he’s in to Baltimore, to memories still vivid of a cavernous office, chairs that seemed to inch closer under gravitational force, fine scotch.  There was intimacy to the drinks they shared there despite the chasm still between them- at times, because of it.  They circled each other in those days, wide eyed predators bearing scars from every blink they’d risked. 

Now…

Now, he can close his entirely, bury his face into Hannibal’s shoulder and breathe in the wild creature he holds.  His heartrate doesn’t even rise.  Hannibal is warm and heavy against his chest, made pliant by the heat of the fire and Will’s body against his beneath their blanket combined with the deeper burn of smooth Tennessee whiskey.  It had only taken the first half hour for his snide remarks about the bottle of wine he’s intended to open to cease, though Will credits less of that success to the taste of the single barrel Jack they’re drinking than to his efforts to enhance delivery, his mouth slow and coaxing over Hannibal’s, feeding him the nuances of flavor off Will’s tongue rather than the depths of his glass. 

He stirs against Will’s chest without urgency, endearing hesitation in the way he reaches out to set his glass so very gingerly on the table, as if he’s working his way through an optical illusion.  His fingers flex in the direction of the bottle, and Will’s huff of laughter is muffled against the open collar of Hannibal’s shirt, his left hand rising to squeeze at Hannibal’s shoulder. 

“I think you’ve had enough.”  More than, in all likelihood, but he’ll make him drink a full glass of water at least before Will drags his ass upstairs.  A couple of ibuprofen, too, if Hannibal will take them. 

“If I have, another would hardly hurt.  It makes more sense—“

No, it probably doesn’t, but he’ll never know exactly how that one was going to end because he chooses distraction instead.  The rake of his hand through Hannibal’s hair comes in a quick, settling motion at first, slower when Hannibal cuts off to lean back into it.  The third time Will kneads a little with his hand, nails scritching softly near the base of his skull until Hannibal makes a soft sound close enough to the ones he makes with Will’s mouth on his cock to have Will’s breath hitch in his chest.  He’s reminded forcefully of his conversation with Chiyoh on the train, of the resemblance between young Hannibal and a lean young panther, all paws and unbloodied teeth and curiosity. 

This is no tamed wildcat reclining against his breast, no matter how eagerly he tilts into Will’s hand, no matter his sighs or the arch of his back.  Their truce is at once far more tenuous and yet stronger for it, thin as horsehair, carrying the tensile strength of tempered steel.  They are both wild and hungry things, locked in a free fall that began long before the cliff, nails like meat hooks in each other’s skin, purring mouths locked to bleeding throats.  There is no master between them, no control.  In that observation at least, Will can agree with the man who sent Hannibal away in Wolf Trap.  In much else, they differ- a zero sum game need not always imply inherent boredom.  He hasn’t been bored since Jack came for him, coming on three years past.

He certainly isn’t now, in a cabin just east of Yellowknife, getting Hannibal drunk in the hopes of staving off the nightmares that came after the snow piled up level with their windows.  Lying beside Hannibal the night before, Will had seen grey-white tendrils of it slither around the sill to come in with the moonlight, snaking around Hannibal’s wrists and climbing until they burrowed their way between his teeth, down his throat.  He woke panting, the echo of screams in his eyes that Will held with his own, unblinking until the reverberations faded.  He hasn’t said a word about the nightmares and Will won’t ask, though he can’t deny that questions he can’t quite feel the edges of burn at his tongue like acid.

_Did she freeze before they found you?  Did you keep her alive, give her your heat and your strength only to watch your efforts fail when they found you both?  Did they bleed her like a calf; did they make you watch?_

Caught up the questions he’s freshly stirred, his hand curls, nails digging in near the part in Hannibal’s hair a little harder than he means to.  The sound that draws is a little deeper, casts vibration back against Will’s chest that tell him if he were to look beneath the blanket that shields them both, despite the laziness the alcohol has put in his limbs Hannibal’s he’d be almost certain to find him growing hard. 

Will’s tongue flicks out to catch the faint hint of Hannibal still on his lips from their kisses, the motion slowing as he gives himself half a second to consider.  It’s tempting; he could pull Hannibal up a little higher against him and take him in hand while they kissed.  As readily as he welcomes sensation in this state, it wouldn’t take long at all to bring him off. 

It’s more than tempting, but Hannibal turns his head in the midst of Will’s internal debate to nuzzle against his cheek, and the decision is made, firmly enough to settle a handful of questions with one stroke, sex and pills and water and staircases. 

There are no windows in this room. 

Will hums softly as he drags his fingers through strands of fine hair, smoothing where he stirs it with his breath as he turns to kiss the top of his head.  The heat of his scalp radiates against Will’s lips, tender and unprotected by anything but this monster he nurtured that he permits now to be his guard against the cold. 

The hand Hannibal had reached for the bottle with hangs limp, off the couch and in the air, undecided.  Will tucks it in against Hannibal’s stomach and draws the blanket higher. 


End file.
